


Autumn in London

by thesunsethour



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Drama, anyway down with the fascists, i love how much ada hates him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 02:47:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20520680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunsethour/pseuds/thesunsethour
Summary: Ada, entirely by accident, finds herself in the company of one Oswald Mosley.  Tommy was right when he christened him the Devil.





	Autumn in London

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve always been fascinated with the moral dilemmas of the shelby family’s rise to power and how that effects their relationship with the ordinary people they represent. i’m particularly interested in ada’s journey

Autumn crept up on London this year, silent and unassuming and then utterly unavoidable. The streets, always damp and crowded were now painted with multicoloured fallen leaves. Ada Shelby walked amongst them, heels from Paris clicking over the summer’s end. Her coat, fur lined and long, was a present from Michael last Christmas. A New York coat on a Small Heath girl; it never failed to make her smirk, dark lips twisting upward.

The Houses of Parliament loomed in the near distance, deadly still even as the wind fought most everything else. It was an autumn sort of building, made for late nights and soft fires, the beginning of darkness and the end of light. Tommy wouldn’t be here today, she knew. There was business to attend to up north. After all these years, Ada had stopped feeling nervous when the boys disappeared for days on end. Some may call it a coolness, she called it coping.

Ancient wood made up the magnificent double doors she pushed open, varnished and delicately engraved. Most everything in the government’s building was ornately decorated; a shield of elegance. 

Heels clicking on the work floor, Ada made her way to her brother’s office, intent on getting a proper start on this month’s agenda. Her role as Tommy’s political advisor was met with shock by outer members of the Peaky Blinders; but anyone with the surname Shelby knew how well the brother and sister worked together.

Those turbulent few years around her marriage and widowing well over, Ada had rarely fought with her brother, at least not on as trivial matters as they would have before. The key to his private drawer that slept in her pocket was a testament to that. 

As she sat down at the bronze oaken desk however, there was a disruption of her traditional Monday mornings, in the form of a rather rapt knock at the door. According to the timetable, splayed open in front of her, no visitors were expected until Wednesday at the earliest, and 1930 at the latest. 

The knocking came again, curt and loud, and Ada, straightening her broach and planting her feet called out an affirmative.

The moment the door creaked open she regretted her decision; for a pair of well-polished Oxford formal shoes imprinted themselves on the green carpet, carrying the body (but lacking the soul) of one Oswald Mosley.

His lips curled in a permanent self-scarified smirk, atop which sat the little moustache that was all the rage in London amongst the top of the top. His suit was well pressed, and his tie immaculately pinned. She couldn’t deny, as a woman, that he scrubbed up well. But as a member of the human race, she couldn’t deny that he was simply evil. 

“Ah, Mrs Thorne,” he said slowly, “or is it Miss Shelby? You never can be sure nowadays. It is a modern age we find ourselves living in, after all.”

A wave of unbridled hatred tore through Ada, but she quite adamantly refused to present this thing with any ammunition. 

“Miss Shelby will do, Mr Oswald. I am here on family business after all. The question then becomes: What are you doing here?”

Though her words were sweet her meaning was unmistakable. Mosley was an outsider, an intruder.

He certainly didn’t act as one, sauntering over to the nearest chair and running his smooth fingers over the top. Fingers that have never worked a day in their lives. Oh yes, he served in the war. It was a topic of great discussion in the Commons. What they don’t mention are the three years of desk work that make up his military service.

“I was quite hoping to speak with your brother, though I suppose his...political advisor is but only a small step down,” he said, taking a seat uninvited at Tommy’s desk. “By now I am quite certain you have heard the rumours of your brother’s changing allegiances. I came here to inquire as to a date when he intends to announce his decision,” he said. “1930 edges ever closer.”

The coming of a new decade both scared and excited Ada. A new decade for a new child, Younger’s child. She thought of his easy smile and bright eyes and felt immediately more at ease, but there was a world of difference between being at ease and being prey.

“It will most likely be in the new year. I trust that doesn’t inconvenience you at all?”

“Not at all,” Mosley forced out. “New beginnings all around.”

Ada nodded, satisfied that Mosley’s business here would be done, and she could get on with her life. The man sitting across from her, however, had a different idea.

“Speaking of changing allegiances, Miss Shelby, I heard a most interesting rumour in the corridors yesterday. Whispers of a communist party member turned labour political advisor”. Mosley smiled pleasantly, as if this sort of discussion was as commonplace as any other. “What on earth would a communist be doing with a monstrously expensive London townhouse?”

Under the table, Ada’s left fist squeezed together painfully, but her right remained still on the planner, now abandoned. She stared at his moustache, which annoyed her more and more with every passing second, and spoke with a coldness that seemed to started her guest.

“Don’t presume to understand my reasonings, Mr Mosley. Don’t presume to know anything about me.”

“Pregnant and dangerous indeed,” he smirked, reaching into his inner coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once the smoke was filling the room he fixed his eyes on Ada’s, and spoke again.

“I won’t presume to understand the communist way of things, and believe me when I say I have absolutely no wish to. But there are those who would classify you as, what was that delightful term - Class Traitors?”. Mosley was enjoying this, Ada knew, and if infuriated her to no end.

“Again, Mr Mosley,” she gritted out, “don’t presume anything about me or my family.”

“We are the People, and we have had enough,” Mosley quoted. “What happens when the ‘People’ live in large country mansions and deal in hundreds of thousands while others can barely scrape a farthing.”

“You act as if you’ve ever seen a farthing.”

“Touché,” Mosley laughed without humour, “How long has it been since you’ve seen one?”

Ada wasn’t sure what game he was playing at, but her patience had run out about five smirks ago, and she rolled her eyes with a hyperbolic air. She was fully prepared to order him to leave right that moment, but he opened his mouth and uttered four words:

“Don’t you feel ashamed?”

Ada nearly groaned in frustration, anger filling her being. If what Mosley wanted was an explanation, she would give him a damn story. 

“Mr Mosley, if you are somehow insinuating that we, my family that is, have flown so far above the People that we are no better than those who for so long kept them downtrodden, then I ask you to stop talking of matters you do not understand.”

Ada stopped there briefly, contemplating whether or not to continue. In a split second move, her mouth began moving again.

“The winter of 1911 was cold, Mr Mosley, not that you would remember. I was not even twelve years old, with a dead mother, absent father, traumatised aunt and a newborn baby brother. Arthur, bless him, tried his best to get money for food and firewood, me and John were only kids, you see. But Arthur was, as I’m sure you can confirm, unpredictable.”

Ada stopped here for breath, caught in a whirlpool of memories.

“It was Tommy who saved us from starving that winter. He took any job he could get and worked twice as hard as any other man. In the evenings he’d let me lay my head in his lap and he’d tell me fantastical stories of far away worlds. Oh the war changed us all, to certain degrees, but Tommy never came back at all.”

Mosley staring back at her, with the disarmed, bored look that only a very curious person can master.

“On Christmas Eve in 1911, Tommy pulled me aside and told me that Father Christmas wasn’t coming that year, but he promised me that one day he’d be the richest man in England, and he’d buy me what Father Christmas couldn’t.”

Ada found herself smiling at the memory, so long ago and yet it still feels fresh and new. 

“Resilience and ambition,” the man pondered.

Moseley thinks he’s found the perfect colleague in Tommy, Ada thought with a sense of faint amusement. Little did he know of the dozens of other plans Tommy had going on behind the scenes. Mosley was a puppet who didn’t even realise he had strings.

“So, Mr Mosley,” Ada concluded, “I feel no great shame in being where I am, and if I feel any at all, you are not the person I would come to”. 

Mosley simply smiled and excused himself.

Ada smiled also, creating a lie by telling the truth was a powerful tool. Tommy would rip Mosley apart from the inside, and Ada couldn’t wait to watch.


End file.
